Thursday, February 27, 2003
Here's a good one. Someone's Redneck Neighbor.
I actually ran into this site a while back, but someone sent it to me again today. <sarcasm>Unfortunately</sarcasm>, my evil neighbor has moved out and a nice family has moved in, so I can't compian about him anymore. He wasn't nearly as amusing as these folks, though. For those unfamiliar with the story, though...
The time was September 2000. The end of a long hot summer in Austin. We were under mandatory watering restrictions, and my neighbor had washed his driveway (to get the leaves off, you know) several times that summer. So I decided after he drove off to leave a note for him. Thought about doing it anonymously, but decided to sign my name to it.
I was out in the backyard trimming some trees when he came over to the back fence. I walked over and he seemed like he was going to be nice enough, but then just went off on me. Told me to mind my own business, that this was a nice neighborhood until I moved in, that what he did on his property was his business. I did argue with him - told him that it was my business, that the water belongs to all of us, that I was trying to be nice by not just calling the cops. As the argument went on, he proceeded to tell me to just stay off his property, and that if I did set foot on his property, he would kill me. That he had a gun, and that he would blow my head off without asking any questions. And that he would do the same for anyone in my family. I tried to be reasonable and not provoke him. After a while, he left, and I went back to my pruning. He came back maybe 2 or 3 minutes later, yelled at me from the corner of Bonnie's yard that if I did call the cops, "You'll just see what will happen." I asked him if that was a threat, and he replied as he left that it was a fact. The most amusing thing was when he "accused" me of being "some sort of libertarian".
Called the police about an hour later, after Julie got home and I told her what had happened.
Pretty scary. When the police came they sent 2 cars. They came to our front door, then one went over to talk to Steve. They filed a report, gave me a case number, and told me that I could talk to a detective on Monday. I called this morning, but the case hadn’t been assigned to anyone yet. The cop I talked to told me that he didn’t want to say what charge could be filed against him, but he thought it would be either a class C misdemeanor threat, or perhaps a class B misdemeanor terroristic threat. He also told Steve that if there was any kind of retaliatory action on his part, that would be a felony. I guess Steve just told the cop that he didn’t want me coming on his property any more. Fine with me. Julie and I are both pretty pissed off. I am going to call the detectives this afternoon, and I think I am going to file charges, whatever they may be. I don’t like being threatened, and I sure as hell am not going to let him get away with threatening my family. The guy is a nut. Afterwards, we were both pretty worked up. I set up my PC camera to point out the window and keep track of any movement, in case he decided to do something stupid.
I actually ran into this site a while back, but someone sent it to me again today. <sarcasm>Unfortunately</sarcasm>, my evil neighbor has moved out and a nice family has moved in, so I can't compian about him anymore. He wasn't nearly as amusing as these folks, though. For those unfamiliar with the story, though...
The time was September 2000. The end of a long hot summer in Austin. We were under mandatory watering restrictions, and my neighbor had washed his driveway (to get the leaves off, you know) several times that summer. So I decided after he drove off to leave a note for him. Thought about doing it anonymously, but decided to sign my name to it.
I was out in the backyard trimming some trees when he came over to the back fence. I walked over and he seemed like he was going to be nice enough, but then just went off on me. Told me to mind my own business, that this was a nice neighborhood until I moved in, that what he did on his property was his business. I did argue with him - told him that it was my business, that the water belongs to all of us, that I was trying to be nice by not just calling the cops. As the argument went on, he proceeded to tell me to just stay off his property, and that if I did set foot on his property, he would kill me. That he had a gun, and that he would blow my head off without asking any questions. And that he would do the same for anyone in my family. I tried to be reasonable and not provoke him. After a while, he left, and I went back to my pruning. He came back maybe 2 or 3 minutes later, yelled at me from the corner of Bonnie's yard that if I did call the cops, "You'll just see what will happen." I asked him if that was a threat, and he replied as he left that it was a fact. The most amusing thing was when he "accused" me of being "some sort of libertarian".
Called the police about an hour later, after Julie got home and I told her what had happened.
Pretty scary. When the police came they sent 2 cars. They came to our front door, then one went over to talk to Steve. They filed a report, gave me a case number, and told me that I could talk to a detective on Monday. I called this morning, but the case hadn’t been assigned to anyone yet. The cop I talked to told me that he didn’t want to say what charge could be filed against him, but he thought it would be either a class C misdemeanor threat, or perhaps a class B misdemeanor terroristic threat. He also told Steve that if there was any kind of retaliatory action on his part, that would be a felony. I guess Steve just told the cop that he didn’t want me coming on his property any more. Fine with me. Julie and I are both pretty pissed off. I am going to call the detectives this afternoon, and I think I am going to file charges, whatever they may be. I don’t like being threatened, and I sure as hell am not going to let him get away with threatening my family. The guy is a nut. Afterwards, we were both pretty worked up. I set up my PC camera to point out the window and keep track of any movement, in case he decided to do something stupid.
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Even WITH wireless LAN access I didn't do much work at the conference - too much NetWorking! Good conference.
Friday, February 14, 2003
It has been a busy week at work. I've been meaning to change our product documentation to something with more structure, so yesterday I downloaded the 0.4 release of Forrest. It was as easy to set up as the docs said it would be, and I was able to generate the simple empty site in about 30 minutes. The next test will be how well it can handle our existing documentation, which is badly organized and all HTML - no XML.
Next week is our yearly developers conference, so I probably won't post much. Unless they have set up wireless LAN access at the conference...
Next week is our yearly developers conference, so I probably won't post much. Unless they have set up wireless LAN access at the conference...
Friday, February 07, 2003
I set up a family blog today - I'm not sure if anyone besides me will use it, but it's there in case folks want to look at it. I've given folks in my family the ability to post to it.
Tuesday, February 04, 2003
Anthill is a tool I've been thinking about using instead of CruiseControl. Here's my writeup on my initial experience:
It was pretty simple to set up out of the box. I was able to get the commons project I have started building pretty quickly. Some strangeness I had to figure out - the version number must be stored in cvs, you have to give it the name of the file, it stores something like.buildnum. and increments the last buildnum, where prefix and suffix are strings.
Here is their build loop:
checkout working copy (clean checkout every time) Does a checkout and then REMOVES working copy every time. Would get slow, it seems.
check if build is needed, generate changes since last good build list.
if so, increment build number and check that in
tag the project (if set to 'tag on all builds')
build the project
tag the project (if set to 'tag on successful builds only')
publish the project (call a secondary build.xml, or second target in build.xml)
remove working copy.
send email, including changelog.
Likes:
easy to set up. Pretty easy to add new projects. Handles dependencies. Everything is on one machine.
Dislikes:
seems like it would be very slow with projects the size we have (always doing clean checkouts)
need to adapt to their versioning scheme
ugly email (not really a big deal)
email sending not as flexible as CC
only seems to publish latest version
no security at all - anyone can change anything!
Looks like they are now moving to "AntHill Pro" with more features. Presumably, they will start charging money for it. According to email from Erik Hatcher, though, they will continue to support AntHill OS (Open Source).
One of the issues that I had with it was its lack of security. It is a web application, and anyone with access to the website can do anything - add projects, remove projects, run builds, etc. Here is a link to the urban code mailing list that has a solution to that problem.
Another issue is the clean checkout thing - here is somehting I found that would address that issue also. [Anthill] How to stop the code tree being removed?
It was pretty simple to set up out of the box. I was able to get the commons project I have started building pretty quickly. Some strangeness I had to figure out - the version number must be stored in cvs, you have to give it the name of the file, it stores something like
Here is their build loop:
checkout working copy (clean checkout every time) Does a checkout and then REMOVES working copy every time. Would get slow, it seems.
check if build is needed, generate changes since last good build list.
if so, increment build number and check that in
tag the project (if set to 'tag on all builds')
build the project
tag the project (if set to 'tag on successful builds only')
publish the project (call a secondary build.xml, or second target in build.xml)
remove working copy.
send email, including changelog.
Likes:
easy to set up. Pretty easy to add new projects. Handles dependencies. Everything is on one machine.
Dislikes:
seems like it would be very slow with projects the size we have (always doing clean checkouts)
need to adapt to their versioning scheme
ugly email (not really a big deal)
email sending not as flexible as CC
only seems to publish latest version
no security at all - anyone can change anything!
Looks like they are now moving to "AntHill Pro" with more features. Presumably, they will start charging money for it. According to email from Erik Hatcher, though, they will continue to support AntHill OS (Open Source).
One of the issues that I had with it was its lack of security. It is a web application, and anyone with access to the website can do anything - add projects, remove projects, run builds, etc. Here is a link to the urban code mailing list that has a solution to that problem.
Another issue is the clean checkout thing - here is somehting I found that would address that issue also. [Anthill] How to stop the code tree being removed?
